Utpal Kumar Panda

When Arun met his daughter Shweta

The Sealdah Rajdhani was about to depart from Sealdah on 26^th May 2008 when Arun  boarded  the coach  and chanced to spot a young pretty girl of about eighteen and her father. The girl’s worried face confirmed that she would travel to Delhi all alone as Arun’s  co-passenger. As the train signaled for departure, the  father planted a very affectionate kiss on her daughter’s forehead and hurriedly left the compartment not before waiving at  Arun  to indicate that he  had to take care of the most precious thing of his life for the next   seventeen odd hours. Since all other six berths of  their  side of coach remained unoccupied till Durgapur,the next scheduled Rajdhani stoppage, the girl looked little bit nervous and Arun  had to ease   her by starting the conversation from his  side. Through one of her  talk on mobile Arun  came to know that the day before she had appeared for a medical entrance examination there at Kolkata . He  asked her to show him  the question paper  because it  was mere a coincidence  that the day before he  was desperately looking for the same for his  son’s preparartion for the same examination two years after .The question paper’s top page  had her name scribbled in her neat hand writing and that was “Shweta”.Shweta  was returning to Delhi where she was attending a coaching institute somewhere  in Munrica area , though her parents are settled in Barrackpore near Kolkata, her father being a Vice Principal there in Kendriya Vidyalaya.

 In last two years, Shweta had  been trying her luck in almost all renowned medical entrance examination of the country without much of success while continuing her coaching in an institute at Munrica. Arun  hardly guess  what Shweta found in  him   but went on telling him  in minute details about her family background, her Singapore settled marine engineer brother and his wife , her Bombay settled medico  elder sister and her husband   and about lot of pressure from them to pursue a medical career  at any cost. Frustration was writ large on her face for not getting any success  though she continued to struggle hard as she was preparing for the last two examinations of the year  on next two  Sundays, as according to her, if she did not find her name in  merit list of any institute within another fortnight or so, in that case she would have no choice left but to join some general line subjects in some ordinary college of either Delhi or Kolkata.

  Through her conversation Arun  was certain about one thing that she was probably passing through the most critical phase of her life as she was under tremendous mental pressure to crack  some prestigious medical entrance exam that  year for which she was putting extra effort for such a long period. It was almost a do-or-die situation for her.

 Arun  found a great similarity  between  her story and of his  when about  27 years  back he  was also facing similar  dilemma before finally getting into an engineering college in Kolkata. Arun  tried  his  best to counsel   her.

Any way, other passengers in Durgapur joined them   and they  had to pull down berths for sleeping.  As Arun  was going to prepare his  lower berth bed for sleeping, Shweta promptly asked him  to stand aside and took all the pain to bring down the blankets,pillow. Bedsheet etc for him  and neatly prepared the bed for him.  That is the point that made Arun  realize that  he  was  one of the most unfortunate  father for not having a daughter like  Shweta.

 The next day morning, Arun  gave her  his  home address and telephone no.  and requested her to send a copy of those questions to him . Shweta was interested to know for whom he  needed them. Arun  told her about his  only son who had then just  appeared in the 10^th class examination and who was very must interested to  join some engineering college there in Kolkata  after passing 12^th. But what he  didn’t tell her that his  only son always  fight with his parents  for not  providing him an elder sister. Could  Shweta  take on that role?

 Arun  promised  her that he  would drop her at Munrica and come back  to New Delhi Station as his  train to Hardwar was  scheduled to depart around 3.30 PM   and  the Rajdhani’s arrival at  New Delhi was around 10.30 AM. But that was not to be. The train movement before Ghaziabad got disrupted due to some local people’s movement  and their  train started getting indefinitely delayed. But thank God that finally it landed at New Delhi station  around 3 PM. So Arun  had to rush to another platform to catch that train.  Shweta was initially bit worried thinking that if the train had delayed  for some more hours ,then she would have  no other option left  but to travel to Munrica all alone at night.  She  also felt  greatly relieved on reaching  the station by that time.

After getting down Shweta touched  Arun’s  feet  and sought  blessing before quickly disappearing into the milling crowd of the station. That was probably their  last few moments of togetherness. Arun  just whispered  in Shweta’s  ears “ God bless you, my child”.  Arun   could hardly suppress his  tears which was of an unknown father for his unknown daughter.

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